British newspaper article raises more concerns about overcrowding in Xàbia

An article that has appeared this week in the British newspaper ‘The Sun’ has raised more concerns about overcrowding in Xàbia at a time when Spain and other European countries are experiencing massive local reactions against tourism saturation in their towns and cities.

The newspaper is one of the most read tabloids in the United Kingdom with over 8.7 million readers every day and La Marina Plaza has picked up on the article and asks if it re-opens once again the debate on whether tourist destinations such as Xàbia are at risk of becoming victims of their own success.

It also doesn’t help that the article is littered with errors that perhaps overinflate the reality of the town. The writer claims that the “vast and golden” Arenal beach boasts the coveted Blue Flag status which it hasn’t done so since 2022 due to the ongoing problems with an outflow pipe.

It also claims that few people in the town calls the mountain of Montgó by its proper name – “it’s rarely called that” – but instead everyone refers to it as “El Elefante”, which La Marina Plaza considers to be an “unusually poetic allusion to the shape of the massif”. For most people who live in the town, it’s the other way round.

And there are more. The Spanish rarely “feast” on paella in the evening as the article claims – it’s traditionally a lunchtime dish – whilst the beach at Cala de la Granadella is one of pebbles rather than one where “the sand dips gently into the clear, shallow water”. And as for it being a “more peaceful beach experience”, the writer has clearly never tried to get to the cove during the summer months, let alone sitting on its pebbles.

However, for all the nit-picking, La Marina Plaza continues to raise the much more important issue of over-promotion of a tourist destination, especially since many other media outlets have picked up on the article. It says that whilst the huge readership of ‘The Sun’ enjoys reading about Xàbia, the reality is that the popular coves like Portitxol and Granadella have filled to capacity with the local council even installing information panels with live updates reporting the parking situation in order to try and avoid the traffic jams that build up during the summer. It asks “Does a municipality like Xàbia, which collapses every summer day and needs to close its coves with barriers to stop crowds, need more tourism promotion?“